4 ms·

Sounds more like a semantic excuse to justify the proliferation of adsense riddled spam content mills that are chasing keyword search volume and making Google a

Sounds more like a semantic excuse to justify the proliferation of adsense riddled spam content mills that are chasing keyword search volume and making Google a hefty sum each year rather than a legitimate conundrum.

robryan 16y ago
What if this low quality content is able to give the answers the user was looking for when the searched? A lot of the ehow type stuff could be considered low quality to some and informative to others.
- ddemchuk 16y ago
  I am not opposed to the content mills per se, mainly because I think that they aren't doing anything "destructive" IE comment spamming, phishing, etc. They're using the tools and data that Google freely provides to produce laser targeted content that the algorithm eats up and ranks high because of their domain authority and onsite interlinking. It's essentially a battle between them and Google, and clearly Google is fine with them doing what they do or else they would have stopped them years ago. What most (power) users are opposed to are scraper sites that reuse other sites' content to rank higher than the original content source, and tactics like eHow uses where they have 10 different articles about how to tie your shoe, but each one has a title that matches a different long-tail version of the search query. Again though, the issue is that Google isn't reacting to and clearing out content spam. Most likely because the sites add to Google's bottom line and a spam engineer modifying the algo to remove the powerhouse content mill sites can actually negatively impact the Google's revenue. Also, when we complain about search quality, we're a vocal micro-minority. Most people, like you said, find these sites useful, and haven't even though about the implications of these content mill sites.
  - Matt_Cutts 16y ago
    "Most likely because the sites add to Google's bottom line and a spam engineer modifying the algo to remove the powerhouse content mill sites can actually negatively impact the Google's revenue." This is definitely not the reason. See my comment at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2059661 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2059661 for more context.
    - ddemchuk 16y ago
      For context purposes: "I was referring to how Google should respond to content farms. Historically, Google has been willing to take manual action on webspam. With the rest of search quality and ranking, Google tries to use algorithms as much as we can. So the distinction of whether something is spam vs. low-quality is an important one within Google." - Matt_Cutts Here's a good example, coming from eHow: http://www.ehow.com/how_5908881_tie-shoe-lace.html http://www.ehow.com/how_5908881_tie-shoe-lace.html http://www.ehow.com/how_5416121_tie-shoelace.html http://www.ehow.com/how_5416121_tie-shoelace.html http://www.ehow.com/how_2076874_tie-shoelaces.html http://www.ehow.com/how_2076874_tie-shoelaces.html I know you are probably asked to respond about specific spam cases constantly, so don't take this as me demanding an answer for this specific instance. However, eHow is clearly leveraging their domain authority here to scrounge up the traffic for each different long tail variation of the term "How to Tie Your Shoelaces". The reason they're targeting each of these phrases with a different page of content is because of the data Google gives them (and all of us) about who is searching for what and how many times per month, coupled with the fact that they have a mega powerful domain which, when a new page of content is added to it that uses an exact keyword in its title, that page will rank top 5 in Google almost every time. Therefore, the data that they're using to come up with these keywords to feed their gaggle of writers is the related keyphrases data provided by your keyword tool. Algorithmically, this should be easily detectable, as you guys have the list of related keyword data that they're using in the first place. http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=How+to+Tie+your+shoe+lace http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&#3... http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=How+to+Tie+a+Shoelace http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&#3... http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=How+to+Tie+Shoelaces http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&#3... Why then, are they in the top 5 for each of these keywords? Are 3+ different guides on how to tie shoe laces really necessary? Shouldn't 1 page be ranking for all 3+ of these tight variations? Shouldn't dozens of related pages of content targeting minute keyword variations be something relatively easy to detect? Seeing multiple Adsense units on these obviously SEO-fueled pages I've linked to leads me to believe there's at least a little bit of truth to what you quoted me saying.
      - Matt_Cutts 16y ago

robryan 16y ago

What if this low quality content is able to give the answers the user was looking for when the searched? A lot of the ehow type stuff could be considered low quality to some and informative to others.

ddemchuk 16y ago
I am not opposed to the content mills per se, mainly because I think that they aren't doing anything "destructive" IE comment spamming, phishing, etc. They're using the tools and data that Google freely provides to produce laser targeted content that the algorithm eats up and ranks high because of their domain authority and onsite interlinking. It's essentially a battle between them and Google, and clearly Google is fine with them doing what they do or else they would have stopped them years ago. What most (power) users are opposed to are scraper sites that reuse other sites' content to rank higher than the original content source, and tactics like eHow uses where they have 10 different articles about how to tie your shoe, but each one has a title that matches a different long-tail version of the search query. Again though, the issue is that Google isn't reacting to and clearing out content spam. Most likely because the sites add to Google's bottom line and a spam engineer modifying the algo to remove the powerhouse content mill sites can actually negatively impact the Google's revenue. Also, when we complain about search quality, we're a vocal micro-minority. Most people, like you said, find these sites useful, and haven't even though about the implications of these content mill sites.
- Matt_Cutts 16y ago
  "Most likely because the sites add to Google's bottom line and a spam engineer modifying the algo to remove the powerhouse content mill sites can actually negatively impact the Google's revenue." This is definitely not the reason. See my comment at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2059661 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2059661 for more context.
  - ddemchuk 16y ago
    For context purposes: "I was referring to how Google should respond to content farms. Historically, Google has been willing to take manual action on webspam. With the rest of search quality and ranking, Google tries to use algorithms as much as we can. So the distinction of whether something is spam vs. low-quality is an important one within Google." - Matt_Cutts Here's a good example, coming from eHow: http://www.ehow.com/how_5908881_tie-shoe-lace.html http://www.ehow.com/how_5908881_tie-shoe-lace.html http://www.ehow.com/how_5416121_tie-shoelace.html http://www.ehow.com/how_5416121_tie-shoelace.html http://www.ehow.com/how_2076874_tie-shoelaces.html http://www.ehow.com/how_2076874_tie-shoelaces.html I know you are probably asked to respond about specific spam cases constantly, so don't take this as me demanding an answer for this specific instance. However, eHow is clearly leveraging their domain authority here to scrounge up the traffic for each different long tail variation of the term "How to Tie Your Shoelaces". The reason they're targeting each of these phrases with a different page of content is because of the data Google gives them (and all of us) about who is searching for what and how many times per month, coupled with the fact that they have a mega powerful domain which, when a new page of content is added to it that uses an exact keyword in its title, that page will rank top 5 in Google almost every time. Therefore, the data that they're using to come up with these keywords to feed their gaggle of writers is the related keyphrases data provided by your keyword tool. Algorithmically, this should be easily detectable, as you guys have the list of related keyword data that they're using in the first place. http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=How+to+Tie+your+shoe+lace http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&#3... http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=How+to+Tie+a+Shoelace http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&#3... http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=How+to+Tie+Shoelaces http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&#3... Why then, are they in the top 5 for each of these keywords? Are 3+ different guides on how to tie shoe laces really necessary? Shouldn't 1 page be ranking for all 3+ of these tight variations? Shouldn't dozens of related pages of content targeting minute keyword variations be something relatively easy to detect? Seeing multiple Adsense units on these obviously SEO-fueled pages I've linked to leads me to believe there's at least a little bit of truth to what you quoted me saying.
    - Matt_Cutts 16y ago